Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff's Blog: #42 Pencil: A Writer's Life, the Universe, and Everything, page 72

A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan – NPR 2013 Great Reads

National Public Radio honors Marie Brennan‘s A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir by Lady Trent among its 2013 Great Reads.

Congratulations, Marie!

On Writing What You Love (and career success)

Larry Brooks interviewed best-selling author Philip Margolin on his latest book and a bunch of related writerly topic. This comment from Margolin struck home for me.

Don’t try to figure out what you must write to get published or make the bestseller list; write something that excites you. If you look at most first novels, even ones that aren’t particularly good, they all have a certain energy that comes from a writer getting an idea that excites them.

I think this is right on target. If you loo...

BVC announces White Mare’s Daughter by Judith Tarr

White Mare’s Daughter

The Epona Sequence, Book 1

by Judith Tarr

$4.99 (Novel) ISBN 978-1-61138-356-0

In a time before history, in a land of legend, where wild horsemen wage endless war across a sea of grass, the last descendant of the White Mare’s servants follows a sacred vision beyond the edge of the world. There she finds a land ruled by women, whose people have no word for war. But the horsemen are coming. The White Mare’s daughter must try to stop them, and both save and change the world.

REV...

Uses of Music in Uttermost Parts

About Uses of Music in Uttermost Parts

by Ursula K. Le Guin

In the summer of 1985 my friend Elinor Armer and I were sitting around on ancient iron chaise-longues in the Napa Valley discussing how a composer and a writer might collaborate from scratch. It’s usually a sequence: first the writer writes the words, then the composer sets them to music. We wanted to see if we could collaborate simultaneously — at least work out the “idea” together at the same time — And, rather than setting the words...

Story Inspiration Sunday

As y’all may or may not know, I’ve been traveling in New Zealand for the last three weeks.

One of the things I love about traveling is discovering how I’ve changed once I return–what fits, what doesn’t, what’s really important and what can just slide out of my life.

In terms of story inspiration, often, I write about characters with heightened senses. Travel helps me experience this.

Radar: I’ve been on my own for three weeks in a foreign country. New Zealand is pretty easy to travel through–...

Science of Interest

I follow a lot of science feeds. Among these arePhys.org,Nobel IntentandScience Daily.Io9is a surprisingly good first step for good and exciting science. In addition, I have a Google alert service for various topics and a couple of individual blogs. I highly recommend John Hawks’blog, for example.

I’ve been having a bit of trouble talking about science lately. It’s not because there’s any lack of interesting things; it’s because there’s somuchof it that it’s hard to settle on one theme.

So I’ll...

Worst Word in the World

A Blue Hound Beagles Blog AKA when-not-writing…

IDIOPATHIC.

We probably all have our Worst Words. That one’s mine.

It means, roughly, disease without known cause.*

*PS That we have no idea how to treat because really, nothing truly works and good luck with that.

Over the years, all of my Lyme symptoms have been idiopathic (and now that they’re not, no one knows how to fix them anyway). And since I was in fifth grade (which is a mighty long time indeed, now), my dad’s mounting inexplicable neurolo...

The Persistence of Vision

My son, knowing that I used to go to L.A. clubs to hear punk during the days when punk was underground (late seventies, until 1981), told me about this documentary about a band called Death.

Three brothers, raised by their father to always have one another’s back, got instruments when their mom won some money, and basically taught themselves to play. They also wrote their own music. Their leader was brother David, who listened to everything he could get his hands on, analyzing, experimenting w...

Leah Cutter’s story featured as podcast

The latest issue of the Fiction River anthology series, Hex in the City, includes the short story “Fox and Hound” by BVC’s Leah Cutter.

For the next week, Cutter’s story is the featured podcast on the WMG Publishing web site.

Cutter’s story is set in modern day Beijing, following the adventures of Gou, a peddle cab owner. In her words:

“I wrote, and threw out, three other beginnings to this story. The process felt as though I was circling in, getting closer and closer, until I finally had Gou i...

Legal Fictions: ‘Kill All the Lawyers’

The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.

– King Henry VI, Part II, Act IV, Scene II

Everyone knows that line from Shakespeare. What they forget is that it’s said by one of a group of conspirators who are plotting to overthrow the king and put another man on the throne.

The conspirators are the comic relief in this play. They don’t speak in iambic pentameter, and the would-be king is a delusional man whose claim to the throne is absurd. Even his followers think he’s an idiot – or at lea...